Entries tagged with technology

Oh of course, printer, you can just decide that you'll not print anything, even something in black and white, because you've run of cyan. And of course replacement ink is practically highway robbery.

And I haven't even used the thing that much, it's mostly been Kurt. Unfortunately I can't ask him to fork over money since this isn't actually his fault since his stuff has also been in black and white, since he did as I asked and made sure he wasn't using the colors unless he had to. So I have to go get some tomorrow so I can make a copy of our new lease and get it signed and all that jazz.

Now that I've had a smartphone for about a month I can tell why once you get one you never go back. Especially since I've been using more and more things on it, like a grocery list, a pedometer (mostly because I was curious just how much I really do walk around here) a checkbook*, apps that tell you when certain MBTA buses and trains will arrive, calendar, alarm clock, and of course Google Maps and Navigator since I am absolutely hopeless when it comes to getting anywhere, including not being able to tell left from right most of the time**. Though it was kind of funny when I was trying to get somewhere and the GPS was apparently a little wonky since it was convinced I was walking in the middle of the Charles River. Not quite. Oh, and I also have something that can identify what song is playing in the background of somewhere like a store since if I recognize it but can't place it exactly it will drive me nuts.

Besides the disaster yesterday, tomorrow I've got that doctor's appointment and then Friday I'm trying to figure out if I can get in both an interview and hopping on the bus back home for Easter. At this point I definitely am going home, it's just a question of when and whether it's the long way or the short(er) way.

* which for the record is not actually connected to my actual bank account, so anyone who stole it wouldn't be able to get my account information** apparently this also happens to my grandmother, so I wonder if it's genetic

One of the ways I've been amusing myself is learning more about DJing, especially making mashups. I think this is the best one I've done so far, and the songs just went together so perfectly that it was uncanny. I've been using this software and I'm starting to get the hang of it. Just reading manuals for software usually doesn't do it, I need to get down and play with it.

Also, this isn't just syncing them so the beats match (that's part of it) but deciding which parts to emphasize, so that's taken some practice.

And yeah, the DJ name is a Mass Effect reference. DJ N7 was taken, so I decided on N7F (the F standing for female).

I'm rather proud of myself for managing to install the mobile version of Opera on my phone, since the browser AT&T provides you with is a piece of shit and they've now decided to charge you for checking your Yahoo mail. I said "fuck that" and through this I found a workaround. I did have to play around with the Java settings to make it accept the security certificate and not tell me every time I went to a new page that it needed permission, but I eventually got it to work. It's a lot better than the default browser on the phone, much faster and displays stuff right. Now I just have to figure out if I can get Flash onto it. I'm glad because I was getting annoyed at the limited capabilities of the default browser, and this has added some life onto this phone before I get a new one.

Today I met up with my friend Sam and two of his friends in Chinatown where they were having the New Year's celebration. There were lots of people in the dragon suits going around to the different businesses and blessing them, and fireworks. Later on we went into a Japanese Shabu-shabu restaurant as a late birthday lunch for Sam, since his actual birthday was when we were all on break, and it was funny when one of the dragons actually came into the restaurant itself. The meal itself wasn't too expensive either, though it was kind of funny when the guys were trying to figure out what the vegetables they'd given us were. Luckily I knew and could help them out.

Current Mood:okay

Current Music:Alison Krauss & Union Station - Goodbye Is All We Have | Powered by Last.fm

We have a running joke at work that I'm partially responsible for, mainly that whenever something weird happens to the database that we can't explain we blame the gnomes. It works pretty well as shorthand for "it's fucked up again" that we can say around the kids that are sometimes in the office.

So today they seemed particularly busy, since I was checking the list of projects and noticed that one was listed in the wrong category. I knew it couldn't be right because I specifically remembered talking to one of the developers for it, and I confirmed this with my notes, so I checked out the rest of that project's entry.

Not only was it in the wrong category, but the comments we put in were from another project entirely. No sign of the originals. I was stumped, and then spent most of the rest of the day putting everything back in that I could get from the paper records we have. That took most of the afternoon.

Even for us, that's a headscratcher. I'm also pretty sure it's not actually my fault this time* since I don't have the necessary privileges to even make changes like that. I told my boss what was going on and even she was stumped, and she effectively built that database.

In short: gnomes. It's the only explanation that makes sense.

* For the record I actually have messed it up a few times, but so has everyone else who works with it.

It would be nice if just once I could upgrade some technology voluntarily and not because the last one broke/got fried by an open water bottle/was lost/got stolen/spontaneously stopped working, but eh, beggars can't be choosers and the very fact that I can replace it demonstrates that I'm not that bad off when it comes down to it.

It's not a smart phone, though they had me look at one that was slightly more that was a smartphone. I considered it until I heard I'd need to buy a data plan, which was the dealbreaker. I'm too cheap. D was (playfully) making fun of me because I was marveling at the bells and whistles on the new one (touch screen! voice commands!), which really are not that special anymore, but since I've been several years behind the technology they're new to me.

The black bar on the bottom is so the picture isn't covered by the menu bar. I also discovered that the phone can function as an MP3, and unlike the last one it uses a regular audio jack, while the last one needed an adapter that you had to buy. So my new phone makes both my MP3 and my camera (mostly) obsolete. Don't you just love technology? :P

I'm also re-adding my contacts, since they got wiped out with the last phone. I think some may be lost to the ether, but the ones I do lose permanently are from people I'm not in touch with anymore anyway. I did put a post on Facebook asking for numbers, and I've already got a few through that.

New phone acquired, and yours truly is slightly less stressed out to learn that on the off chance I do find the old one I can return the new one and only get hit with a $30 restocking fee. The guy at the store was very nice and didn't try to upsell me from what I wanted to get, either, so that helped. I (probably) wouldn't have bit his head off if he did since I used to work retail and I understand it's part of the job, but I think he correctly guessed that I was in no mood for horseshit, so it was appreciated.

This whole thing managed to totally derail what I had planned for the day, mainly call the maintenance guy again since the stove is only working intermittently again and call a guy about possibly getting a futon for this place, both of which were impossible to do without a phone, but I'll try to relax and make up for some lost time. Also, eat, since I tend to find that when I'm in a fowl mood I can usually reduce that feeling by eating something.

I've also decided that the new phone's name is Amaterasu (as in the wolf Goddess from Okami, see my journal header), since the old one was Mokona, and if it's not blatantly obvious already I am a dork. Don't ask why, it just makes sense for some reason. It's an LG Prime, and has a moderate amount of bells and whistles. It also charges off a USB cable in addition to a regular charger, which is handy since it cuts down on the number of cables I have to have hooked up to my power strip.

Oh, and the cherry on the crap sundae that was today was when I was walking home and some assholes driving by in a car decided to comment on the size and shape of my posterior in what probably passed in their minds as a compliment. For the record, that's called being creepy. They got the finger since I was in no mood to deal with that.

I cannot find my cell phone and I want to cry. I know I had it last at the gym yesterday since I dropped it on the floor and the back panel came off, so I had to put it back on, and somewhere between there and home it went missing. I still had my sweatpants on so the only place it could have gone was my purse, my jacket pocket or my backpack, all of which I checked thoroughly. I've torn the apartment apart, gone to the gym to see if someone found it, and tried calling it from Skype (which cost me $10 since I had to buy Skype minutes) in case I could hear it if it was here, but nothing, it just went to voicemail, and it seems the battery's dead since when I first tried it on Skype it rang but now it just goes to voicemail automatically. I even sent a text message through Skype promising a cash reward if someone has it and they return it to me. I don't know if it just fell out of whatever I was carrying it in or if someone took it, but it's gone.

Goddamit. I just fucking replaced this thing less than a year ago, and it's increasingly looking like I'll have to do it again and toss down at least a hundred for a brand new one. And knowing my luck the second I go out and buy a new one the old one will turn up. I'll try to wait until tomorrow at the earliest to do anything in case it does turn up, and when D comes home I'll have her call it and I'll keep calling it on Skype in case someone picks it up. I'm so frustrated that I'm tempted to just go out now, deactivate the current one remotely so people can't steal the information on it and just plunk down the money for a new one.

Why do I have such bad luck with technology lately? I got rid of the Vonage phone to save money, but that'll more or less be erased by the price of a new one. I guess it's time to be a grownup and charge the emergency credit card, even though I hate doing that, but that's why I have the damn thing and since my cell phone is now my only phone at this point I don't seem to have a choice in the matter since I need to be able to call people and they need to be able to call me.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

Edit: Fuck it, if the battery's dead the odds of someone finding it and getting it back to me are next to none, so I'll just go out and get one before the store closes at 7. Not like I have a choice.

Bad news: I need to go out and get a wifi router unless I want to go through the trouble of connecting my laptop to the modem directly with an ethernet cable. This isn't so bad since routers only run 30 or 40 bucks a piece and I have a Staples coupon anyway. It's also cheaper to just buy one than rent one from the company.

Good news: We have cable.

Bad news: They apparently gave us a shitty box that crapped out about an hour after it was installed. So they're sending another person out tonight to fix it. And I checked, they will not charge me for this since it's their fault. Otherwise I'd be pretty pissed.

Also I won't be doing a radio show today since it's too much trouble to run up to the school, since I'm now stuck here waiting for the tech.

Some jerk apparently hijacked my email account and used it to send spam email to all the contacts in my online address book. I use Thunderbird and have all my main contacts there, but this jerk sent messages to my minister and therapist advertising Viagra!

I already contacted Yahoo and changed my password and sign in key, and when I get home I'll do a malware sweep on my laptop. I doubt they did it using my computer because of the Thunderbird thing, but it's still frustrating.

So apologies if you got an email from me like that, if I ever find who did this I'll throw them off a building or something.

... I'm aware that my Twitter posts are no longer showing up in batch posts, because LoudTwitter, the service that shipped them, had its domain expire and the original owner doesn't intend to renew it. I'm trying to find an alternative, but for now there's a link in my sidebar to it. I may just end up leaving it since quite a few folks here follow me on Twitter anyway, but I'll take a look around to see what I find.

I will, however, repost a thought I had while I was at the gym (with a slight alteration because I messed up the wording):

What's the difference between campaign ads and cats fighting? One is full of yowling and defensive puffing up and the other has fur.

So I was thinking that now I have this LJ, a Twitter and now a Tumblr and about how I'm going to set the three up in terms of how they interact. Without really meaning to I think I've got a pretty good setup.

The Tumblr is for the most part random images or links I come across, most of which are pretty irreverent, which then get sent to the Twitter, which is for the most part short little thoughts about stuff happening in the present. The Twitter then ships to the LJ, which is where I go more in depth and talk more about my opinions and day to day life. I don't think I'll ever go into detail on politics on my Tumblr or my Twitter, but I often do that here.

So essentially it's a hierarchy of how much thought I've put into stuff, and also how personal I get with each thing I put up, and they all at some point end up back here, the homebase, so to speak, since this is more or less my website and I've been here since 2004 (which is kind of shocking when I really think about it since it's over a quarter of my life).

For the record I've completely cut my Facebook out of this process, since I don't really like Facebook in general and I don't really want them to overlap, though there are a few people who follow me on both. And yes, part of it is that Facebook has my real name on it, so it's much more my public face.

I also noticed that these days nearly everything I have online that gives information about me doesn't bother to hide the fact that I'm a lesbian if not outright stating it. If I don't say it on a particular thing it's more because there's not an easy way to do it more than me wanting to hide it. If I was even trying to pass as straight these days I'd be doing a pretty shitty job, and maybe as a result the amount of crap I get about it these days is close to 0, most being some form of "Oh, you're gay? Cool."

I sort of want to chart all this now, since it does seem very interesting sociologically when it comes to label negotiation.

So yeah, new phone, and I'm having fun playing with it. The camera in it is actually pretty decent, and it was nice to see that they gave me an automatic $50 airtime credit when I bought it since I had to refill the thing anyway.

I also have to give credit to the guy at the AT&T store who helped me, since he was very responsive and didn't try to make me get anything I didn't want. He also just seemed like a nice guy, so when the text he said will probably show up in the next day or so asking how he was gets to me I'll give him a good review. The process was a lot less painful than I expected.

Now that I actually have the thing (an LG Neon) I think it's kind of cute, since it's little. It's not an iPhone nor do I need one, but it has some bells and whistles including a music player, which is probably a good thing since I have a feeling my cheap little USB device is going to die any day now. I also got a 4gb memory card that should hold most of what I want to do with it. The memory card has an adapter to put into my computer, so I just grabbed this picture that I took on the way home and put it up:

The quality on the camera is actually pretty good, not as good as my digital camera but quite a bit better than my old phone. I think I'll have fun with that.

Ironically I had been thinking that when the money from Suffolk comes through I might want to upgrade my phone, but me being an idiot pushed that ahead more than I had planned. It's all good, though, even though I still can't believe I dropped my phone into the toilet and fried it. The only phrase I can describe that with is Epic Fail.

Yeah, it's official. The old cell phone is kaput, if only because the keypad no longer works, which is kind of a problem since it means I can't make phone calls or do much of anything, including turning the damn thing off without manually popping out the battery.

After a while wrestling with the AT&T website I found out that I'll only be able to keep my current number and balance if I buy a new phone at one of their stores, wrecking my plans to do it online since I don't want to have to buy a new plan since I'm so incredibly cheap. I'll probably go over to one of their stores tomorrow or sometime soon to do that, probably by the weekend. Until then I just have to survive without a phone, and even though I've plastered it all over my Facebook wall I just know someone who didn't get the message is going to try to call me.

Luckily I get paid tomorrow and the money from Suffolk should (emphasis on should) be showing up Friday, so it's not as big a blow as it could be. It's still irritating.

It will turn on and recognize the SIM card, which is more than yesterday, but the number pad is working sporadically, so I've taken it apart again and given it the rice immersion treatment again. The other day all seemed to be working fine, but now it's flaky again. As far as I can tell I can take calls since it's set up so that just opening the phone answers it, but if the number pad is fried I can't make any.

Well, my phone is on and the SIM doesn't appear to be damaged. Looks like the rice did the trick. Still, I could have gone without that.

I'm glad, since I really didn't want to have to spend the money I've been waiting on for a month to replace it. Now I probably will have to replace it sooner rather than later, but now I can do it at my leisure.

Cheapness prevails!

(I currently do a pay-as-you-go card because I'm too cheap to sign up for a plan, and I really don't use it enough to justify spending even $40 a month on it. That and I hate phones. With a vengeance. Unless I'm talking to someone I actually like, at which point I'll tolerate them, but in general I still hate them.)

So I dropped my cell phone in the toilet at my gym when I was changing my clothes. Basically, it fell out of my pocket and "plunk!" right in the bowl. And yes, the first word out of my mouth was indeed "shit."

I fished it out ASAP followed the recommended steps to try and save it (which is basically take everything out and let it dry), and now I just have to wait for it to dry completely to see if it's savable.

Now I know I tend to rag on cell phones and make fun of people who use them incessantly, but I can see why it's so D: worthy when you do something like that. I seem to remember that once happened to my dad's boss with his pool, but it's never happened to me.

I don't want to replace it! I'm too cheap! However, my cell phone did get a crack in the outside screen a little while ago and I've been thinking that I'm probably getting to the point where I'll have to replace it, but not like this!

Now usually I'm all for supporting sites with ad revenue, but after the third time that happened today I'd had it. They keep getting me on several sites I go to and either scaring the crap out of me or breaking my train of thought. God, I thought pop ups were bad, but at least with them you usually knew where the offending window was, but if you use tabs like I do you have to search around for it get it to shut up!

And if you're listening to music it's even worse. Nobody interrupts Eric Clapton for some shitty cleaning product! Nobody! Especially if you're Charlie Baker, who is not getting my vote anyway, and I have to click him away just to read the goddamn news!

Whoever came up with these ads gets my nomination for "Should be dragged out into the street and shot."

So this morning when I booted up the computer crashed. And then crashed again. And again. And again. Ad nauseum. It would work for a few minutes, then *bam* down again. I couldn't even get on the internet to see what was going on before it crashed.

I ended up calling first Microsoft, but because I couldn't find the disc my version of Windows 7 came on and the precious ID number, so they shunted me over to Gateway. The guy was going to have me wipe my whole hard drive, but it appears that some parts of it had become corrupted and all I had to do was wipe those though the setup at start up. Or something, I'm not too good with this stuff. Either way my files are safe and I didn't have to do anything too drastic, but just to be safe I'm making another backup of everything and so far it hasn't crashed again. It seems a bit clunky, but that may be due to running the backup.